April 9, 2019

Massachusetts Department of Corrections

• According to WHYY public radio, neurological researchers Michael Zigmond and Richard Smeyne have recently aimed their studies at understanding the physical impairment of the brain caused by solitary confinement. While the damaging psychological effects of isolation have been widely examined, Smeyne says that physical damage might prove more powerful than psychological damage in legal proceedings. The researchers’ […]

• The Associated Press published an anonymous firsthand account from an 18-year-old Honduran boy who experienced abuse at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center and participated in the recent lawsuit against alleged brutality and use of solitary confinement at the facility. The plaintiff reported incidents including officers withholding food and a group of officers kicking him so […]

The following account is written by Daniel Holland, who is serving a sentence of life without parole in Massachusetts at MCI Norfolk prison. After eight years of good behavior, he had earned the privilege of a single cell. But his clean disciplinary record was broken when he was placed in solitary confinement after being interrogated […]

The inmate at Massachusetts’ Norfolk Prison who blew the whistle on a sex-for-information ring operated by guards (as reported here last week) has been placed in the hole. Timothy Muise, an activist with the Lifers Group inside the prison, said in a letter that he had been visited by Assistant Deputy Commissioner Paul DiPaolo, the state official in […]

A prisoner at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Norfolk has written to Solitary Watch to report the existence of a “sex for information’’ ring run by guards within the prison. He says the existence of this hitherto unknown operation is responsible for the state’s high number of prison suicides. The inmate suicide rate in Massachusetts is four times the national […]